This is the final part of a three-part series about "opportunity areas". The first two blog posts in the series, Unearthing socially engaged art’s complicity in the gentrification of Elephant & Castle nd 'There for the taking', focused on three artists who I suggested were complicit in gentrification by working for state-funded initiatives like Creative People and Places and with property developers Delancey in the soon-to-be-demolished shopping centre at Elephant and Castle. I know quite a few people felt I had been unfair, aggressive, vitriolic, indignant and cynical. I was at pains to explain that the tale I told was not unique nor unusual. Socially engaged art is commonly used as a form of placemaking. The examples I described in the work of Eva Sajovic, Rebecca Davies and Sarah Butler were mundane. A perhaps crass attempt to illustrate much bigger problems in our lives that are mirrored in art practices.

COLOURING IN CULTURE

A blog by PhD researcher, art historian, curator, writer, activist and community arts practitioner Stephen Pritchard about art, activism and politics in the place where we live.

My research covers participation in art and culture spanning from everyday creativity, participatory art, socially engaged art and social practice to social praxis, political art and activist art; from state instrumentalisation to carnivalesque freedom.